


that falling dream

by Anonymous



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Boston University Terriers, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 05:14:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15236124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “We should fuck,” Shane says one night, when they’re half-passed out on the couch in Bobo’s living room.





	that falling dream

**Author's Note:**

> self-indulgent and unbetaed. i'm very sorry. go terriers.
> 
> many artistic liberties were taken regarding rooming situations and boston's einstein bagels locations
> 
> title from "in my arms" by grizfolk

“We should fuck,” Shane says one night, when they’re half-passed out on the couch in Bobo’s living room. His hand is loosely wrapped around the neck of a Seagram’s bottle that’s mostly empty, and Brady knows he saw Shane at least pretending he was interested in picking up shotgunning tips from some jackass in white shorts and a Chi Phi sweatshirt. It’s still weird—Shane is a quiet guy off the ice. Not really prone to proposing intercourse with his buddies out of the blue, even when he’s a few down.

  
“Excuse me,” Brady says, once a few moments have passed and Shane’s words are still heavy in the air. “We should what?”

  
“Fuck,” Shane says, serious. He’s slurring his words just the slightest bit. “Like, you do things to my dick. It works the other way too.”

  
“I know what fucking is, dumbass,” Brady says, but his head feels too thick with alcohol for him to be genuinely annoyed. “Why are you saying we should?”

  
Shane gives him a heavy-lidded look. It could be sexy in different lighting, but Bobo’s girlfriend’s ugly thrifted lamp just makes him look tired. He flexes his wrist and the inch of vodka left in his bottle sloshes around kind of lethargically. “I don’t know,” he says, shrugs. “Just thought you might want to.”

  
Brady doesn’t—Brady doesn’t not want to. He doesn’t know. He hasn’t ever thought about it. He tries to lift his head up to give Shane a closer look, to see if he’s joking or not, but the room starts spinning, and he gives up on that idea pretty quickly.

  
“I’m good,” he says finally, and twists around so he’s laying on his side and his face is smashed into the cushions of Bobo’s huge couch. There’s a part of him, the same part that thinks Shane has nice eyes, that says he should reconsider. Brady ignores it.

 

 ...

  

Dante, there for whatever reason, yells them awake the next morning and drags them to Einstein for breakfast along with Bobo and Farrance, who Brady’s ninety percent sure left at around midnight last night but is freshly showered and wearing actual shoes instead of flip flops.

  
Shane’s gaze is heavy on Brady as he bites into his bagel. Brady risks a glance at him.

  
“Hey,” Shane says, smiling lightly, and for a second everything feels normal enough that Brady thinks he imagined last night.

  
It’s too clear to be a false memory, though. The inch of liquor left in Shane’s bottle, how low his voice was. His eyes, blinking at Brady now from across the table.  
“Hey,” he says back, forces himself to look directly at Shane. “You okay?”

  
Shane nods. He’s still staring, smiling a little, and Brady feels his face getting warm. He throws a piece of egg at Dante to ease the tension.

  
“Oh, fuck you,” Dante shouts. Farrance cackles, and when Brady looks up, Shane is laughing at them, and the moment is gone.

 

 ...

 

Shane isn’t unattractive, though. Not at all.

  
Brady resents him so much, so fucking much, for being able to casually bring that up and drop it like it never happened. Brady can’t drop it, that’s for damn sure. It feels like it’s sandpapered into his brain. He notices the way Shane’s throat works when he talks, follows the shifting in his muscles when he lifts. Tracks the lines of sweat down his collarbone. The way his shirt sticks to his back, the way he lifts its hem to wipe his face off.

  
He thinks about how Shane looked when he opened his mouth, said _We should fuck_ , irreverent and earnest at the same time. The weight of his eyes from across Bobo’s shitty couch.

  
Shane doesn’t catch him staring, so Brady doesn’t stop.

 

 ...

 

“Shane,” Brady says, and nudges him. Shane is sprawled across his legs, so it’s not like it’s hard to do. He just kind of flexes his foot.

  
Shane grunts. Brady digs his toes into Shane’s ribs.

  
“Shane,” he says.

  
Shane lifts his head. His hair is fucked up in a way that makes Brady feel warm.

  
“Do you remember,” Brady starts, but Shane is staring at him and it’s hard to say it straight out, under the force of that gaze. He clears his throat and looks down. “Do you—do you remember when you asked me—“

  
“Asked you what?”

  
Brady looks up, ready to ignore him and steer straight ahead, but Shane’s eyebrows are raised like he’s trying to issue some kind of challenge. His face is pink, and for some untold reason, seeing Shane blush like that is almost worse than getting hit straight in the numbers, in terms of what it does to him physically. Brady is entirely sure that if he opened his mouth he wouldn’t be able to make any noise.

  
“Asked you what?” Shane repeats, and he sounds less confident this time.

  
“You,” Brady says, and stops himself. He doesn’t know if he wants to make things easier for Shane or push him and see where it goes, if the color in his cheeks gets deeper. If he wants to forget it and never think about Shane’s arms again.

  
He thinks he mostly just wants to know if Shane meant it.

  
“Say it,” Shane says. He’s still staring.

  
Brady thinks he might spontaneously combust if Shane keeps looking at him. “Can you just—“

  
The door to their room opens with a bang, and Oetter stomps in. “Freshmen,” he announces. He seems entirely oblivious to their impromptu staring contest. “Come with me.”

  
“It’s two in the A.M.,” Shane tells him, and he finally looks away. Brady releases a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. “What the fuck do you want?”

  
“Oh, like you were sleeping?” Jake scoffs. He holds the door open and makes sweeping gestures towards the hallway.

  
Brady glares at Jake as he hurries them out into the street. “This better be good,” he says, and means it. He can feel the warm line of Shane’s body pressed into his side.

  
Oetter ignores him. “I was at T’s with this absolute smoke factory from Psych, right,” he starts, and launches into a long-winded story about how he went home with her, and how she swallowed, but everything got cut off when he realized he didn’t have his phone, but he brought it into T’s with him, but he’s been looking for half an hour and it isn’t there and—

  
“Jesus,” Shane interrupts. “We’ll help you look for your fucking phone, okay?”

  
“Thank you,” Jake says, and he sounds genuinely grateful. “She doesn’t have class tomorrow morning, so—“

  
“Oh, God,” Brady groans, just as Shane says “Get out of my fucking face, Oetter.”

  
Jake slings his arms around both their shoulders. “Let’s go, boys,” he says. “I promise I won’t make fun of your white deep V’s for at least a week.”

 

 ...

  

Brady tries to stop staring at Shane. Actually tries, too, doesn’t half-ass it. He makes conscious efforts to look away every time it’s not just the two of them talking, becomes hyper-observant of where he’s focusing when they’re alone. He pretends he’s asleep when Shane comes into the room late three nights in a row and strips off his shirt instantly, arms flexing. He even puts a rubber band on his wrist and snaps it every time his eyes slide back, like a complete freak.

  
Brady takes it off eventually because the captains won’t stop shooting him concerned looks. He tells himself it’s not a problem and keeps looking anywhere else.

  
He’s lying in bed with his headphones in, face a few inches from the wall, resolutely not thinking about Shane, when someone pounds on their door loudly enough that Brady can hear it over his Gucci Mane. He’s expecting it to be Shane, having lost his keys, but it’s a guy he’s never seen before, and Brady’s greeting dies on his lips.

  
“Hey,” the guy says, smiling warmly. He’s got nice teeth. Very straight.

  
“Hey,” Brady answers warily. “Can I help y—“

  
“Do you know where Shane is?” the guy interrupts.

  
Brady is feeling less agreeable by the second. “Not here right now,” he says, and then, in a last-ditch effort to summon some Midwestern hospitality, “he’ll definitely be back by nine, if you wanted to come back then?”

  
“Nah, it’s fine,” the guy says, and flashes him a blindingly white smile. “I’m Kyle, by the way.”

  
“Brady,” Brady says. Kyle glances back and smiles again, wide and obnoxious.

  
“I know,” he says cheerfully. “Shane talks about you a lot.”

  
Brady nods. He doesn’t trust himself not to say something rude, so he clamps his mouth shut.

  
Kyle flops down on Shane’s bed and stretches out in a way that suggests he’s been in their room before. For reasons Brady doesn’t want to delve too deeply into, the thought of that makes him want to hurl his phone through their shitty dorm window.

  
“Right,” he says, and grabs his computer. “Well, if you’re going to, uh. Stay there?”

  
Kyle makes an affirmative noise. Brady grits his teeth.

  
“I think I’m gonna go,” he tells Kyle, and bolts.

 

 ...

  

Brady sees Kyle two more times that week. Once, at one of the BU dining halls, all the way across the room, which he can easily handle. He nods back when Kyle waves at him. It’s friendly enough.

  
The second time, it’s in Brady’s room. The one he shares with Shane, which Kyle is. With Shane, in the room. That’s harder to handle.

  
“Hey,” Brady says, when he’s recovered enough from the unpleasant sensation of deja vu overpowering him. “What’s, uh. Up?”

  
Shane squints at him. Brady shrugs back.

  
“This is Kyle,” Shane says. His shoulders are tense, like he’s expecting some kind of fight to break out.

  
“We’ve met,” Brady says, and nods at Kyle, who smiles widely at him and nods.

  
“Oh,” Shane says. The tightness in his shoulders is spreading; his jaw is kind of clenched. “Well, we’re leaving, probably.”

  
There’s a significant part of Brady that wants nothing to do with whatever Shane and Kyle are up to. The other part—the part that makes him feel like a complete freak and won’t fucking let go of what Shane said in Bobo’s apartment, the one that desperately wants to be close to Shane no matter the circumstances—is telling him to say something that’ll make Shane stay.

  
Brady can’t stand that part of him. “Cool,” he says, and busies himself with his backpack so he won’t see them leave.

 

 ...

  

Although he attempts to avoid thinking about Kyle nearly as much as he avoids thinking about sex with Shane, the guy won’t stop showing up in their room. He comes to T’s with them, twice, and he comes to one of their games. Shane elbows him gently in the ribs as they’re heading over to Bobo’s apartment again, Jesus, and it makes Brady feel ill.

  
It’s later, when they’re sitting on the same couch they were weeks ago when Shane looked at Brady with heavy-lidded eyes and said _We should fuck_ , that Brady understands.

  
Kyle brings Shane a drink, and their fingers graze slightly, and Shane gives him the same look he gave Brady, all charged and seductive, and Kyle grins back at him like he knows what comes next, and Brady realizes—

 

 ...

  

“They’re _fucking_ ,” Brady says loudly. He rubs his temples; he has a pounding headache. “Can you believe that?”

  
Jake, leaning against the wall, looks utterly unimpressed. “So?” he asks. “Lots of people are fucking.”

  
“Jake,” Brady says incredulously.

  
“You could be too, if you spent time trying to get any instead of just going up to hot girls you don’t know and making out with them,” Jake tells him.

  
“One time,” Brady says. “Stop bringing that up.”

  
Jake cocks his head. “Why is this pissing you off so much?”

  
“Because I was drunk and you won’t let it go,” Brady says. Jake rolls his eyes.

  
“Not that,” he says. “Shane.”

  
“It’s not—“ Brady starts, but Jake holds up a hand.

  
“I don’t want this to fuck you up, dude, and it clearly is,” he says. “Just go talk to him.”

  
“I can’t,” Brady says.

  
“Yeah, you can,” says Jake. “Please. Do it.”

 

 ...

  

Brady tries to psych himself up enough to take Jake’s advice as Shane rummages around in his sock drawer, looking for God knows what. Brady can’t stop staring at his damn shoulders, which, if there was ever a signal that he needs to be done with this, is a perfect one.

  
“So,” Brady says. He has to work to keep his voice steady, which, fuck that.

  
Shane makes a vaguely questioning noise. His stupidly perfect back is still to Brady, and maybe that’s why Brady is able to swallow and say “Are you fucking Kyle?”

  
Shane goes completely still, painfully quiet for a few long seconds too many, and then says, guarded, “Why?”

  
Brady feels a little like he’s been punched. “So you are,” he says.

  
“So what if I am?” Shane demands, turning around to glare at him. “Why the fuck do you care?”

  
Something ugly is bubbling in Brady’s chest, something that he hates, huge and overwhelmingly bitter. He feels like he has to reach out and grab Shane, grip his arm tight enough to leave a mark, or he’ll be gone and Brady will overflow.

  
Shane keeps looking at him, challenging. His eyes are as bright and unreadable as ever, and Brady doesn’t say anything, because he’s a fucking coward.  
The moment stretches on until Shane nods and drops Brady’s eyes. He slings his bag over his shoulder.

  
“Fuck you,” Shane says, so quiet Brady can barely hear it.

  
The door slams behind him.

 

 ...

 

Brady goes out. He drinks with Jake and Dante and even Pat Curry, who he secretly thinks is the lesser of the two Pats, but who is Jake’s best friend and their teammate and must be tolerated.

  
He does it three nights in a row and crashes at Dante’s all three times, avoids Shane at practice and every spot on campus he knows Shane frequents. Dante gives him ugly looks, but he lets Brady stay over anyways, and he keeps his mouth shut.

 

 ...

  

When Brady goes back to their room for the first time since Shane walked out on him, he foolishly doesn’t expect to find Shane there. Because God and the universe hate him, however, Shane is sitting at his desk, and he jumps slightly when Brady comes in.

  
“Listen,” Brady says hurriedly, before Shane can get up, because he feels like if Shane leaves again he won’t come back, and the thought of that is worse than anything that’s happened so far. “I’m sorry that I was such an ass about you and that guy—“

  
“Kyle,” Shane says quietly.

  
“Kyle,” Brady corrects himself. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a problem with him, I promise.”

  
“Yeah, you do,” Shane says. He’s watching Brady with inscrutable eyes.

  
“I did, okay, but I don’t, not anymore, because if he makes you happy I’m happy for you, man,” Brady says, a little desperately, and cuts himself off when he realizes he’s rambling. “I mean—okay.”

  
It’s been three days since he saw Shane, actually saw him, and it feels like it’s been months. Brady is happy, so inexplicably happy, to realize Shane’s gaze still feels as heavy as it did on Bobo’s ugly couch, and that his eyes are just as blue. It’s probably the dumbest thought he’s ever had. He doesn’t really care.

  
“I was jealous,” he says, and breathes out hard. “Because you were with him and not me.”

  
Shane looks caught off-guard for the first time since Brady opened the door. He opens his mouth and closes it again.

  
“It’s dumb, I know,” Brady says. He wants to kick himself for bringing it up, for making it about that at all. “You’re not into me, you were drunk and I’m sorry, I know that, but I was so fucking mad when you were together, and it’s because I was jealous.”

  
Saying it aloud feels like he’s run a fucking marathon. He closes his eyes and waits.

  
“I asked if you wanted to fuck me and you don’t think I like you?” Shane asks. His voice is so full of disbelief that Brady opens his eyes to see Shane staring at him, eyebrows drawn.

  
“I—“ Brady says. He’s completely off-balance. The only thing he can think to say is “You had just annihilated half a fucking handle of vodka, Shane.”

  
Shane gives him that _look_ , that fucking look again, and the heat behind it is enough to make Brady feel like he’s been body-slammed into the ground.

  
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it, dumbass,” Shane says, and stands up.

  
“Oh,” Brady says. He still feels winded. “That’s good.”

  
“Hey,” Shane tells him as he steps forward. He’s about a foot from Brady when he stops, and it takes an enormous amount of control not to jump him right then and there. “Kyle’s not my boyfriend.”

“That’s good too,” Brady says, and he gives up on self-control. He grabs Shane and kisses him, hard.

  
Shane moans into his mouth instantly, like something straight out of shitty porn, but it’s so hot Brady thinks he might die and he shudders at the sound. He feels dizzy even as he presses Shane into the mattress, gets a thigh between his legs, as he grinds down and feels Shane jerk upwards and bite hard on his shoulder through his worn-down shirt.

  
“Hey,” Shane pants, as Brady sucks a mark onto his collarbone. “Are you—Jesus Christ—are you convinced yet?”

  
“What,” Brady says breathlessly into the skin of Shane’s neck, and bites lightly just for the noise he makes.

  
“Fuck,” Shane groans, which might be the most beautiful sound Brady’s ever heard, and yanks him up so they’re eye to eye. “Do you believe that I like you yet?”

  
Brady kisses him. “Shut the fuck up,” he says into Shane’s mouth, and swallows his laugh afterwards.

 

 ...

  

“I did it,” Jake announces when they walk into Agganis together at the next practice. “I’m perfect. I fixed them.”

  
“Fuck off,” Brady says. “I don’t care if you’re a goalie, I’ll make you eat the boards.”

  
“No you won’t,” Jake says. “You love me and your life would be ass without me.” He still skates to the opposite end of the rink when Brady gets on the ice, though, so Brady will call it a win.

  
“Hey,” Shane says, and bumps him with his hip. “Let’s go to Einstein when we’re done. I want a bagel.”

  
Brady bumps him back gently. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”


End file.
